Bailment describes a legal relationship in common law where physical possession of personal property, or chattel, is transferred from one person (the ‘bailor’) to another person (the ‘bailee’) who subsequently has possession of the property. The disclosure herein relates to controlling inventory in any bailment situation, where one party is entrusting temporary custody of that party's personal property to another party for safekeeping. Bailment arises in a wide variety of situations, including valet parking, dry cleaning, warehousing and carriage of goods, to name just a few non-limiting examples. The background and the various embodiments disclosed herein are described in terms of the checking of a coat at a place of public accommodation; however, those skilled in the art will recognize that the present invention will find application in any bailment situation.
It is known in the art to provide a service, either for a charge or gratuitously, whereby a person entering a business may check their coat (or other garment, item or package, all collectively referred to herein as “coat”) for safekeeping while they are on the premises of the business. The guest is generally given some form of token or ticket to identify which coat belongs to them, and the guest may retrieve the coat when they are ready to leave. Such services are popular because many guests do not want to bother with keeping track of their coat while they are on the premises. Providing a coat check attracts more customers to a business and enhances the customer experience while they are on the premises. While the concept of checking coats may seem straightforward, anyone running such a service quickly comes up against a number of well-known problems. Here are some of the more persistent challenges:
Lost Coats.
The liability associated with checking coats is a large risk for a business providing a coat check. The expense of garment replacement, and the harm to the reputation of the business that come with losing a customer's coat, are potentially large. The expense of replacing a coat will often exceed the profit earned from the customer's visit by many multiples.
Lost Tickets.
Traditional coat check services give customers a ticket or other token for their checked coat. It is not uncommon for customers, particularly those at bars or nightclubs, to then lose those tickets. This leads to customer frustration and longer check-out times while attempting to match the customer to their coat.
Unclaimed Coats.
Coat check services in bars and nightclubs commonly wind up with a number of unclaimed coats at night's end. The establishment must then decide if they will deal with hanging on to the garments or trying to return them, or throw them out. Each answer presents its own set of drawbacks.
Check-in Time.
Customers do not want a coat checking process that slows them down unduly, and business owners do not want customers spending time at the coat check station when they could be making purchases. For some businesses, the crush of patrons all needing their coats at closing time also is a daunting prospect.
Locating a Coat.
Just as customers do not want to stand in a long, slow line to check their coats, they also want the check-out process to be quick and efficient. When hundreds of coats are checked over the course of one night, the logistics of finding a particular coat can be a challenge, and errors in hanging the coat are possible. When a customer loses his bailment ticket, then there is usually no way to confirm which coat belongs to the customer.
Similar issues arise in almost any bailment situation. It will be appreciated then that there remains a need in the art for improvements in existing systems and methods of controlling bailment inventory. The present invention is directed to satisfying this need.